The percentage of US adults who believe in God has declined to 89% from 92% in 2007.
By Sreekanth A Nair
A recent survey conducted by Pew Research Center, a non-profit research organization, shows that the percentage of people affiliated with religions has decreased in the US.
The report states that “an extensive new survey of more than 35,000 U.S. adults finds that the percentages who say they believe in God, pray daily and regularly go to church or other religious services all have declined modestly in recent years.â€â€
The survey was conducted from June 4 to September 30, 2014, with a sample of 35,071 US adults over telephone and cell phone. The study is a follow-up to an earlier study on religion in America conducted in 2007.
The percentage of US adults who say they believe in God has declined slightly from approximately 92% in 2007 to 89% in 2014. This rate is still high when compared to advanced industrial countries. But the share of people who say they are absolutely certain about the existence of God has declined sharply from 71% to 63%.
The decrease in the religious belief and behavior is however largely attributed to increment in the number of ‘nones’ in the US.
Among who believe in God, 55% pray daily. Religion is very important for 53% and 50% of them religious services at least once in a month. The ratio was 58%, 56%, and 54% respectively in 2007.
Though the percentage of religiously affiliated people has declined, the study doesn’t show any significant drop in most measures of religious commitment, among adults who claim to be religious. “Indeed, by some conventional measures, religiously affiliated Americans are, on average, even more devout than they were a few years ago,†the report says.
During the period, adults who are religiously affiliated have been decreased to 77% from 83% and the share of unaffiliated people rose to 23% from 16%.
Among the religiously affiliated adults, 97% believe in God and among religiously unaffiliated, only 61% believe in God. In 2007, 70% of unaffiliated had said that they believed in God.
Almost 66% of religiously affiliated people say that religion is very important to them and they pray daily. This shows a slight increase from 2007 when the shares were 64 and 65 respectively. But the percentage of affiliated people who attend services at least monthly has decreased from 63 to 62.